Roma Bank gives Robbinsville alternatives to planned building

After months hanging in the air for months, Robbinsville township could soon find a municipal home.

Roma Bank, after backing out of plans that would have given the township a floor on a new building on Route 33, has given the town two other options.

Mayor David Fried said in a radio interview Thursday afternoon that the bank, which backed out of the building after a merger last year with Investors Bank, offered the township the plot of the proposed building, or a favorable rent on space in the current Roma Bank building. He said two other developers had reached out to the township with similar offers.

“We think it is a very fair offering and something we are going to take seriously,” he said.

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Fried said the township would go to a request for proposal process to make sure the administration did not miss out on the best possible deal.

The township would have paid $3 million for the building’s third floor, which broke ground last October. Construction has stopped, leaving the building’s footprint as a fence-enclosed dirt lot on Route 33 in Town Center.

Robbinsville’s new municipal home had been up in the air since Roma Bank announced its sale to Investors Bank on Dec. 19, Fried said. The township has been renting out a floor of the Sharbell Development Corp. building in Robbinsville since its old office building had to be closed following flood damage.

The all-stock deal, worth about $450 million, gives Roma investors 0.8653 shares of Investors stock for each stock in Roma, or about $15 a share. Regulators still need to approve the sale, and the acquisition will be finalized by May.

Roma Bank Chairwoman Michele Siekerka said in March that Investors did not have real estate ownership as part of its business model, and backed out of the building plans because of that. She said then that the bank would offer an alternative to Robbinsville shortly.

As part of the merger, the bank announced it would lay off some 57 of its more than 300 employees in Robbinsville. President and CEO of Roma Bank Peter Inverso said 40 of the employees had not sought positions in the new company and all were receiving severance packages.

In addition to the layoffs, Roma Bank also announced it would open a commercial lending unit in Robbinsville with more than a dozen loan officers.

Inverso and Siekerka were not immediately available for comment. Inverso, who retired from the state senate in 2008, is running for his old seat as senator for the 14th district this fall.